But later in the day, while Sangree went off in the canoe to fish the pools near the larger islands, and Joan still lay, bandaged and resting, in her tent, Dr. Silence called me and the tutor and proposed a walk to the granite slabs at the far end.  Mrs. Maloney sat on a stump near her daughter, and busied herself energetically with alternate nursing and painting.

“We’ll leave you in charge,” the doctor said with a smile that was meant to be encouraging, “and when you want us for lunch, or anything, the megaphone will always bring us back in time.”

For, though the very air was charged with strange emotions, every one talked quietly and naturally as with a definite desire to counteract unnecessary excitement.

“I’ll keep watch,” said the plucky Bo’sun’s Mate, “and meanwhile I find comfort in my work.”  She was busy with the sketch she had begun on the day after our arrival.  “For even a tree,” she added proudly, pointing to her little easel, “is a symbol of the divine, and the thought makes me feel safer.”  We glanced for a moment at a daub which was more like the symptom of a disease than a symbol of the divine—­and then took the path round the lagoon.

At the far end we made a little fire and lay round it in the shadow of a big boulder.  Maloney stopped his humming suddenly and turned to his companion.

“And what do you make of it all?” he asked abruptly.

“In the first place,” replied John Silence, making himself comfortable against the rock, “it is of human origin, this animal; it is undoubted lycanthropy.”

His words had the effect precisely of a bombshell.  Maloney listened as though he had been struck.

“You puzzle me utterly,” he said, sitting up closer and staring at him.

“Perhaps,” replied the other, “but if you’ll listen to me for a few moments you may be less puzzled at the end—­or more.  It depends how much you know.  Let me go further and say that you have underestimated, or miscalculated, the effect of this primitive wild life upon all of you.”

“In what way?” asked the clergyman, bristling a trifle.

“It is strong medicine for any town-dweller, and for some of you it has been too strong.  One of you has gone wild.”  He uttered these last words with great emphasis.

“Gone savage,” he added, looking from one to the other.

Neither of us found anything to reply.

“To say that the brute has awakened in a man is not a mere metaphor always,” he went on presently.

“Of course not!”

“But, in the sense I mean, may have a very literal and terrible significance,” pursued Dr. Silence.  “Ancient instincts that no one dreamed of, least of all their possessor, may leap forth—­”

“Atavism can hardly explain a roaming animal with teeth and claws and sanguinary instincts,” interrupted Maloney with impatience.

“The term is of your own choice,” continued the doctor equably, “not mine, and it is a good example of a word that indicates a result while it conceals the process; but the explanation of this beast that haunts your island and attacks your daughter is of far deeper significance than mere atavistic tendencies, or throwing back to animal origin, which I suppose is the thought in your mind.”